Eighteen months after deployment, the NVMe SSDs in a hyper-converged node have reached 80 % of their wear life. Management wants the drives replaced without taking the server offline. The 1U chassis exposes eight 2.5-inch drive trays that connect to a PCIe backplane as well as two on-board 2280 M.2 slots. Which drive form factor should the technician order to guarantee hot-swap capability through the existing front bays?
U.2 (SFF-8639) NVMe drives are built in a 2.5-inch form factor that mates with a blind-mate backplane, allowing them to be inserted or removed while the server is powered on (hot-plug/hot-swap). M.2 modules attach directly to an internal motherboard socket that the NVMe specification explicitly states is not hot-pluggable. Half-height/half-length (HHHL) add-in cards must be installed in PCIe slots behind the server cover, so servicing requires a power-down. E1.S drives can be hot-swapped but need a specialized EDSFF backplane; standard 2.5-inch bays cannot accept them. Therefore, only the U.2 option meets the hot-swap requirement with the existing chassis.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is hot-swap and why is it important in servers?
Open an interactive chat with Bash
What is the difference between U.2 and M.2 NVMe SSDs?
Open an interactive chat with Bash
Why can't EDSFF (E1.S) drives be used in standard 2.5-inch bays?